Of approximately 18,200 ha planted to sugarcane in south Texas, only approximately 80 ha (<0.5%) are treated with insecticides because this type of control is widely regarded as ineffective against stalkboring pyralids, the key pests of sugarcane. Therefore, nonchemical control measures, such as resistant varieties and biological controls, must be evaluated to mitigate the losses caused by stal...

A layer of harvest residues from the previous crop can reduce wasteful evaporation from the soil surface and thereby increase the efficiency of use of limited water resources for agricultural production. The practice of harvesting sugarcane green and leaving crop residues in the field, as opposed to burning the residue, has been re-adopted in many sugarcane industries worldwide. However, a bett...

OBJECTIVE Fresh sugarcane has been a new roughage source for ruminant's in semiarid regions, a function of the decline of sugar and alcohol industry in recent years. However, there is little data published regarding lambs fed sugarcane associated with spineless cactus. This study evaluated the effect of sugarcane replacement with spineless cactus (0%, 33%, 66%, and 100%) in the diet of Santa In...

BACKGROUND Fermentable sugars are important intermediates in the biological conversion of biomass. Hemicellulose and amorphous cellulose are easily hydrolyzed to fermentable sugars in dilute acid, whereas crystalline cellulose is more difficult to be hydrolyzed. Cellulose fast pyrolysis is an alternative method to liberate valuable fermentable sugars from biomass. The amount of levoglucosan gen...

Eldana saccharina Walker (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae) has caused high yield losses in KwaZulu-Natal sugarcane. Early cutting is one of a number of methods being used to reduce losses due to E. saccharina infestations. A cohort based age-structured mathematical model was developed to enable sugarcane growers to simulate the effect of various seasonal conditions on E. saccharina infestation levels. T...

Sugarcane, one of the most photosynthetically efficient crops, is an important source of sugar and feedstock for green energy and co-generation. The high level of polyploidy and genomic peculiarities in this crop point towards a complex mechanism of regulation for the economically important traits like sugar content, cane yield related traits, resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses etc. The ...

Three experiments on the control of nematodes in sugarcane fields are described and res+ults based on yield responses and nematode numbers are quoted. Meloidogyne practically disappeared when the grass, Erugrostis curvula was grown for three seasons, but increased when tomatoes and beans were groyn. Yield responses to nematocides in the absence of Meloidogyne show that this is not the only nema...

Mushrooms have been used as food supplement from times immemorial not only for their nutritive value, but also for their medicinal properties. This investigation attempts to update the present cultivation status and project the future prospects of the oyster mushroom, Pleurotus ostreaus for its biomedical potential. Comparative analysis of the yield and the chemical composition of clusters of P...

The Mexican rice borer, Eoreuma loftini (Dyar) (Lepidoptera: Crambidae), is an invasive species that originated from Mexico, and it is threatening to cause major economic losses to sugarcane, Saccharum spp., and rice, Oryza sativa L., industries in Louisiana. The insect is expected to reach sugarcane and riceproduction areas inLouisianaby2008, and infest all ofLouisiana sugarcane and rice indus...

Interpretation of sugarcane field records can bc greatly improved by linking them to a Geographic Information System database, which allows trends to be mapped and queries to be performed. Linking a Geographic Information System to a crop or irrigation model allows simulation of crop yield and irrigation water use efficiency for each field, based on ficld informatton. The Arcview Geographic Inf...